But the ruling Aliyev’s Yeni (New) Azerbaijan party, which faces little challenge from the embattled opposition and is set to easily retain its majority in the legislature, has vowed the elections will be fully democratic.
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Global rights groups have cast doubt on the vote, accusing the government of jailing political opponents on trumped-up charges and limiting parties’ ability to campaign in the ex-Soviet state.
Musavat and other mainstream opposition parties in Azerbaijan, a mainly Muslim country of about nine million people between Iran, Russian Federation and Turkey, are boycotting the poll.
“The Azerbaijani government’s crackdown on independent and critical voices has a particularly damaging effect ahead of the country’s November 1 parliamentary elections”, OCSE official Isabel Santos said in a statement quoted by AFP.
The main rival for Ilham Aliyev’s “Yeni Azerbaijan” party is “United National Front” party.
Hajili said only 24 of the 73 candidates nominated by the opposition party have been registered for it by the authorities. He said the Pakistani people, parliament, political parties and Government look forward to welcome both the President and First Lady to Pakistan.
The parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan were free, open and competitive, said representatives of various monitoring missions and delegations who monitored preparations for the elections and the course of the voting.
Head of the 28-member observer group Jordi Xucla said the election had been transparent, no major violations notified and no pressure exerted on voters.
PACE called on the authorities to “urgently improve the situation on human rights and to continue the democratic development of the country after the elections”, noting “serious concerns in the sphere of human rights still remain in Azerbaijan” including the imprisonment of activists. The election was monitored by 503 worldwide observers from 40 organizations and over 66,000 local observers. In the two years that followed, the Aliyev regime aggressively targeted its critics, starting with those who told the truth about that fraudulent election, then moving on to the human rights defenders working to defend the rights of those political prisoners.
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At one point, the Council of Europe’s working group with Azerbaijan was seen as a potential bright spot in an otherwise dark area of global isolation.
